WOMAD

Tiger Moth

From United Kingdom

Anyone who regularly takes a Sunday broadsheet or three won’t have been able to escape the clamouring attention that folk music’s had lumped upon it over the past year. Laptop folk, folktronica, acid folk, twisted folk… Seems like anyone who’s able to pick up an acoustic guitar is playing one, whether they’re steeped in the grand folk tradition or they’re former dance music personages trying to keep it reel. Tiger Moth are no Johnny-come-latelys. They’ve weathered multiple turnings of the tide as folk’s fashionableness has waxed and waned, a defiant ceilidh band with a fine line in absorbing music from across the continents into their sound. No laptops, no drum & bass pedigree – just good old-fashioned, steam-driven instruments that know how to turn eager dancers into big old sweaty messes. Led by Ian Anderson, the avuncular editor of f:roots magazine, the band recently were persuaded out of retirement to become one of the highlights of Rivermead 2004. Of late, plenty of veteran musicians from across the world have been dusting off their instruments for one last tilt at fame and acclaim. Think of Tiger Moth as the same. As they themselves offer, they’re “the English roots dance band world's answer to Bembeya Jazz or Buena Vista Social Club. Well, maybe…”In A Few Words… Hi-octane English country dance with outernational leanings.